YouSaid · the spoken record

Max Altman

lines on the record: 110
first: 2025-11-21
most recent: 2025-11-21
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“That the goal was not to tell the LPs how much money you're gonna make them, even though they're financially, you know, my job is to get LPs the most money back. And I thought that's what they wanted to hear. But I think what they want to hear is you have a strategy that fits exactly what their portfolio wants.”
2025-11-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Max Altman on The New Seed War: Can Anyone Compete with Sequoia and a16z | Leaving $2BN on the Table with Reddit | Lessons from Backing Rippling at $25M Post | Why Climate Tech is a Mirage and Disaster · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, and I don't have a good reason to why not. We just sort of said okay, great, we have this, we had our number, we're done, I think, in the future. We might spend a little more time getting that in.”
2025-11-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Max Altman on The New Seed War: Can Anyone Compete with Sequoia and a16z | Leaving $2BN on the Table with Reddit | Lessons from Backing Rippling at $25M Post | Why Climate Tech is a Mirage and Disaster · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of course they're all incentivized completely different. A fund of funds or someone that works at a family office is incentivized to get the best returns possible because they're paid out on the upside. An endowment or a foundation for the most part just wants to keep their brand intact, have a nice relationship with you, make sure you don't do anything dumb, but like why do they care if you're a 7x fund or a 2x fund, at least financially? So we absolutely saw that as like for the more traditional institutional capital, like give them a story and a product that feels good for what they're invested in and for a family office or a fund of funds. Tell them how much money they're going to make if they invest with you.”
2025-11-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Max Altman on The New Seed War: Can Anyone Compete with Sequoia and a16z | Leaving $2BN on the Table with Reddit | Lessons from Backing Rippling at $25M Post | Why Climate Tech is a Mirage and Disaster · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This was the advice, and I will give him credit that Sam gave me that I did not listen to, which is don't talk to other LPs until you have your really high quality anchors locked in. And then, of course, we went and talked to everyone, and everyone's like, do you have much capital of your raids? And we're about to raise 20 from this person. And they're like, okay, so you've raised zero. But we had a few people that I had worked with before in hydrazine and Apollo. They took a little bit of time, but we got them across the finish line. They came in with some pretty nice checks. And then we went back to the other LPs. And they're like, oh, okay, we're automatically in. These endowments that have worked with you before are in, clearly you must be good. So I think wait until you have your anchors locked up.”
2025-11-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Max Altman on The New Seed War: Can Anyone Compete with Sequoia and a16z | Leaving $2BN on the Table with Reddit | Lessons from Backing Rippling at $25M Post | Why Climate Tech is a Mirage and Disaster · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, it was amazing because now we have really sticky amazing capital for the rest of our careers as long as we perform exactly. And then going into fund too.”
2025-11-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Max Altman on The New Seed War: Can Anyone Compete with Sequoia and a16z | Leaving $2BN on the Table with Reddit | Lessons from Backing Rippling at $25M Post | Why Climate Tech is a Mirage and Disaster · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We were three partners who had not had traditional VC backgrounds, and it was a new partnership. And I think the biggest reason we got no's was everyone's like, you haven't worked together. You're not living in the same city. So we want to hold out and see how these things go and feel it out for fun too. Also, we went right to institutionals. I was fortunate enough to not be a maybe traditional emerging manager because of the prior fund track record. So we went right to endowments and foundations. And some of them loved that. We ended up with, I think, six endowments in the first fund. But a lot of the endowments don't love new partnerships and first funds. And we were sort of elephant hunting rather than going to some smaller family offices.”
2025-11-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Max Altman on The New Seed War: Can Anyone Compete with Sequoia and a16z | Leaving $2BN on the Table with Reddit | Lessons from Backing Rippling at $25M Post | Why Climate Tech is a Mirage and Disaster · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Absolutely, and also, like you just said, it gets you around the right people. It is always a good thing to have a CEO of a multi-billion dollar company that you're texting with on a weekly basis. It's never going to be bad for the firm.”
2025-11-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Max Altman on The New Seed War: Can Anyone Compete with Sequoia and a16z | Leaving $2BN on the Table with Reddit | Lessons from Backing Rippling at $25M Post | Why Climate Tech is a Mirage and Disaster · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, absolutely. And I love that you mentioned the last two of just having the brand cachet and being around the best people. I've done that for the last eight years. Like it's absolutely the right way to invest. You go to people's websites, other funds, and they're like, we've invested in all these amazing companies. And you're like, well, I do that too because it really helps and founders don't care if you did a 25K check or a million dollar check at the seed. They just think that you've invested in the best companies. We absolutely should be doing that.”
2025-11-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Max Altman on The New Seed War: Can Anyone Compete with Sequoia and a16z | Leaving $2BN on the Table with Reddit | Lessons from Backing Rippling at $25M Post | Why Climate Tech is a Mirage and Disaster · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's what's keeping me up at night. That's why I'm not sleeping for the last six months. I'm extremely price sensitive. I'm just like, hey, we get 25 bullets per fund. And if you pay twice the price, you get half as many bullets. And that's a really tough way to invest. That being said, like we can't fully sit out. And at least right now.”
2025-11-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Max Altman on The New Seed War: Can Anyone Compete with Sequoia and a16z | Leaving $2BN on the Table with Reddit | Lessons from Backing Rippling at $25M Post | Why Climate Tech is a Mirage and Disaster · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right now it is not, but we started this 18 months ago. And dude, Harry, 18 months ago it was. The deals were at 20 or 25. I was not seeing these 50 or 60 million valuation deals even in last year.”
2025-11-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Max Altman on The New Seed War: Can Anyone Compete with Sequoia and a16z | Leaving $2BN on the Table with Reddit | Lessons from Backing Rippling at $25M Post | Why Climate Tech is a Mirage and Disaster · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We were a new partnership. We built a model where we said, hey, we are going to do twenty to twenty-five lead seed checks. And then we'll probably spend 10% of the fun doing what we're calling these like opportunistic deals. Jack and I had invested in owner.com before this. Adam, I think, is an absolute killer. So when he was raising a little bit more, I texted him like, yo, can you like, you know, help us out a little bit? Obviously, we went on to do a pretty nice size check in there. And we'd be stupid not to. But the construction was around 20 to 25 lead seed checks around two to two and a half million dollar entry price, the math mass then with 30% reserves to about 100, 125 million. And I think it was actually great to prove out that the three of us could work together. Obviously, we're going to size up from here, but I don't think it would have been great to start with 300 million.”
2025-11-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Max Altman on The New Seed War: Can Anyone Compete with Sequoia and a16z | Leaving $2BN on the Table with Reddit | Lessons from Backing Rippling at $25M Post | Why Climate Tech is a Mirage and Disaster · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, I think there are actually some really strong companies in Austin, whether it's Base Power or Saronic, they're significantly less than San Francisco, but I've found that when I'm in New York or San Francisco, I make a lot of decisions and a lot of hectic decisions, but I don't make a lot of great decisions. Like I make the best decisions when I'm in my backyard meditating by the pool, like calling the founder and really thinking through it. And I found in San Francisco I couldn't have that level of clarity of mind”
2025-11-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Max Altman on The New Seed War: Can Anyone Compete with Sequoia and a16z | Leaving $2BN on the Table with Reddit | Lessons from Backing Rippling at $25M Post | Why Climate Tech is a Mirage and Disaster · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think one of it is plain to my strength. I'm not everywhere I live in Austin. My two partners live in San Francisco. We cover a lot, but we don't cover the entire thing. We historically have not, I've done basically no PR, which we can probably dig into later. We're not covering the whole universe, so I don't think that we're set up to have a smattering of 10 to 12 unicorns in this fun. And frankly, I enjoy spending a little bit more time with the founders. So we're doing 20 to 25 checks in this first month.”
2025-11-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Max Altman on The New Seed War: Can Anyone Compete with Sequoia and a16z | Leaving $2BN on the Table with Reddit | Lessons from Backing Rippling at $25M Post | Why Climate Tech is a Mirage and Disaster · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think Box Group is great because I remember growing up around SV Angel and, you know, going to the Giants games with Topher and these guys were just like awesome. And they're like, hey, our model is to do a little bit here and there. We don't need to lead anything. Like, there's a reason why there's leftovers when they send them to us. And I think Box Group has actually sort of succeeded in building the same model. I remember everyone's like, hey, for those funds, this is not going to work. You don't have enough ownership. You need to hit 10 unicorns. And SV Angel was like, Okay, we will. And they did. You know, I really take seriously what the two of them send us.”
2025-11-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Max Altman on The New Seed War: Can Anyone Compete with Sequoia and a16z | Leaving $2BN on the Table with Reddit | Lessons from Backing Rippling at $25M Post | Why Climate Tech is a Mirage and Disaster · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Great question. We've had a lot of luck from a lot of actually the CTOs, to be totally honest. The CTOs in the companies that we are in, because they're a little bit less like flashy and they're connected to really deep technical people. We've had a lot of success of them sending us their buddies”
2025-11-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Max Altman on The New Seed War: Can Anyone Compete with Sequoia and a16z | Leaving $2BN on the Table with Reddit | Lessons from Backing Rippling at $25M Post | Why Climate Tech is a Mirage and Disaster · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sure, but they also have like $8 billion and they can't spare 10 or 20 to put into the A. And like, to be honest, almost none of the best deals I've ever done have been sent by another fund because why would they? They're like, hey, there's this great deal. You should really get in. I'm like, if it was a great deal, you wouldn't be sending it to me. You'd be doing everything. And Harry, the same with us. If we have a great deal like profound, we are putting in all of the money we possibly can. We're obviously fighting with Kleiner and Sequoia, which is challenging because they also want as much as they can, but there's not room to bring in other people. So if a VCC sends us a deal, like we're not normally excited, the best deals we have come from founders referring their friends.”
2025-11-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Max Altman on The New Seed War: Can Anyone Compete with Sequoia and a16z | Leaving $2BN on the Table with Reddit | Lessons from Backing Rippling at $25M Post | Why Climate Tech is a Mirage and Disaster · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah. And if they don't do it, you're screwed. Exactly. And I know everyone says this, but the risk of them not following on is massive. Like, I fully believe if they're like, hey, Sequoia led our seed and like, hey, are they doing your A? And they're like, well, they're doing their pro rata. I'm like, this is not a good company. Objectively is not a good company.”
2025-11-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Max Altman on The New Seed War: Can Anyone Compete with Sequoia and a16z | Leaving $2BN on the Table with Reddit | Lessons from Backing Rippling at $25M Post | Why Climate Tech is a Mirage and Disaster · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah Profounds in New York. Oh, right. There we fucking go. Yeah, we gotta be everywhere. Ladies and gents point proven. But I think we have some good companies in San Francisco as well. But yeah, Profound was in New York and we were able to start with a really large position there. And they've obviously had tremendous success. And if that works, the fun's great. And that's our model. We don't need to cover everything. We need to have a few people who love us enough to take our money early on.”
2025-11-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Max Altman on The New Seed War: Can Anyone Compete with Sequoia and a16z | Leaving $2BN on the Table with Reddit | Lessons from Backing Rippling at $25M Post | Why Climate Tech is a Mirage and Disaster · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Is in there, a lot of gills in there, but there's a lot of other random people, and there's really not something where Sequoia and Andreessen has taken up half of those lead checks at the seed.”
2025-11-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Max Altman on The New Seed War: Can Anyone Compete with Sequoia and a16z | Leaving $2BN on the Table with Reddit | Lessons from Backing Rippling at $25M Post | Why Climate Tech is a Mirage and Disaster · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I really don't agree with you. I also think the data points of the funds I've done will also disagree with you. We've built the model. Saga's $125 million fund. If we have one winner and we start with 10% of it and we can't cover the whole market, we only cover a portion of it, the fund's great. If we start with 10%, end up at 7% of IPO, it goes for 10 billion, returns 700 million, we just need one. We don't need to be Andreessen where we lead 10 or 20 seed deals. And I also disagree with you that they have them all locked up. I think there was a stat that came out recently of like post-transformer world in the last four to five years of all the AI companies that have started that are now worth over a billion. Of the first 40 of them, only one person had two lead checks, and that was Andreessen, and no one else had two. And if you look through the smattering, there are green oaks.”
2025-11-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Max Altman on The New Seed War: Can Anyone Compete with Sequoia and a16z | Leaving $2BN on the Table with Reddit | Lessons from Backing Rippling at $25M Post | Why Climate Tech is a Mirage and Disaster · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's a knife fight, and founders found in Sequoia and Index and Kosla, like they're amazing firms that have sort of locked it up. I went to go lead a series A or try to lead a series A one time. And I remember the other term sheet came from Sequoia. And I saw the email that the founder got. It was from Mike Vernal. And they basically said, hey, Sequoia is on the board of the six most valuable private tech companies in the world and the six of the ten most largest IPOs of the last 12 months. And by the way, feel free to talk to any of these people about their experience working with Sequoia. And it was like the Collisons. It was like, you know, Dylan at Field. It was the guys at DoorDash. And I'm like, dude, I'm not going to win this deal. Why the hell would they take my money against that? So don't try to do that. I'm clearly going to lose the deals that I want to lose. And if I win them, it's probably...”
2025-11-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Max Altman on The New Seed War: Can Anyone Compete with Sequoia and a16z | Leaving $2BN on the Table with Reddit | Lessons from Backing Rippling at $25M Post | Why Climate Tech is a Mirage and Disaster · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I think it's sort of stay in your lane. And this has really set how we've built in Saga of, look, I think I'm a very good seed investor. I think I have a great network and people like me. I think I can slip medium-sized checks into a lot of great deals. But I don't think I can go out and win Series A's at this point in my career.”
2025-11-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Max Altman on The New Seed War: Can Anyone Compete with Sequoia and a16z | Leaving $2BN on the Table with Reddit | Lessons from Backing Rippling at $25M Post | Why Climate Tech is a Mirage and Disaster · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I think we wanted to be somewhat involved with it. And there were a lot of amazing founders building in it. And they're going to build great things, but they're not going to get us great VC returns”
2025-11-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Max Altman on The New Seed War: Can Anyone Compete with Sequoia and a16z | Leaving $2BN on the Table with Reddit | Lessons from Backing Rippling at $25M Post | Why Climate Tech is a Mirage and Disaster · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Completely dependent on the price of carbon and when the economy starts to do less well and you are a mega company and you need to say we're spending billions of dollars a year on carbon credits, at the end of the day it's like great. So if you spend your money there, you're going to have to lay off people and tell them, hey, by the way you're unemployed and can't feed your family because we really wanted to buy some carbon credits because the money's the same pot of money. And I don't think that feels good for anyone. Like that's not how businesses are going to work moving forward.”
2025-11-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Max Altman on The New Seed War: Can Anyone Compete with Sequoia and a16z | Leaving $2BN on the Table with Reddit | Lessons from Backing Rippling at $25M Post | Why Climate Tech is a Mirage and Disaster · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, of course, there was a disaster. I think it's going to be a disaster. Like, hey, climate change is real. The government should deal with it. I don't think what makes you think that.”
2025-11-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Max Altman on The New Seed War: Can Anyone Compete with Sequoia and a16z | Leaving $2BN on the Table with Reddit | Lessons from Backing Rippling at $25M Post | Why Climate Tech is a Mirage and Disaster · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Stay focused. I think we got a little bit like you just said, we're doing this and we're touching climate tech because we're curious and like didn't have a ton of success there.”
2025-11-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Max Altman on The New Seed War: Can Anyone Compete with Sequoia and a16z | Leaving $2BN on the Table with Reddit | Lessons from Backing Rippling at $25M Post | Why Climate Tech is a Mirage and Disaster · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'll be fine, but I do think most VCs have the position to say once things become liquid and the lockup ends that their job is to distribute. It's not just us.”
2025-11-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Max Altman on The New Seed War: Can Anyone Compete with Sequoia and a16z | Leaving $2BN on the Table with Reddit | Lessons from Backing Rippling at $25M Post | Why Climate Tech is a Mirage and Disaster · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I think I mostly agree with you. I do think there are clear winners, maybe, you know, an Andrew or a Hadrian that we're in that are clearly going to help the fund. But I do think it's sort of like, it's more fun, maybe. You know what I mean? It's like we were getting a little bored. It's more fun to do that stuff. And frankly, we maybe branded ourselves that way, but we were doing Palantir. We were doing other good things.”
2025-11-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Max Altman on The New Seed War: Can Anyone Compete with Sequoia and a16z | Leaving $2BN on the Table with Reddit | Lessons from Backing Rippling at $25M Post | Why Climate Tech is a Mirage and Disaster · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Same strategy we wanted to add a little more hard tech so we sort of branded it as we're doing a little bit more robotics manufacturing climate tech maybe we can get into that later too because we had less deal flow there and we had a great deal flow inside”
2025-11-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Max Altman on The New Seed War: Can Anyone Compete with Sequoia and a16z | Leaving $2BN on the Table with Reddit | Lessons from Backing Rippling at $25M Post | Why Climate Tech is a Mirage and Disaster · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I believe that. And I think, yeah, moving forward, it's just going to be call your anchor LPs and say, let's talk through how we want to handle the situation. Obviously go the other direction.”
2025-11-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Max Altman on The New Seed War: Can Anyone Compete with Sequoia and a16z | Leaving $2BN on the Table with Reddit | Lessons from Backing Rippling at $25M Post | Why Climate Tech is a Mirage and Disaster · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think that has changed my thinking, and I think from here it's going to become a discussion on a one-off basis because that's the difference between a 5x fund and a 15x fund.”
2025-11-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Max Altman on The New Seed War: Can Anyone Compete with Sequoia and a16z | Leaving $2BN on the Table with Reddit | Lessons from Backing Rippling at $25M Post | Why Climate Tech is a Mirage and Disaster · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That was tough. I think the market cap's about $39 billion now. I think it's pretty public, the fund to own just about 7%. You can do the math. That's about maybe $2 billion of gains that could have been. It's a lot, but we're in the business of saying after the lockup, we're not public market investors. And, you know, LPs are like, thank you, you did your job. We would like you to distribute it back. And I think that's reasonable. We aren't public market investors.”
2025-11-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Max Altman on The New Seed War: Can Anyone Compete with Sequoia and a16z | Leaving $2BN on the Table with Reddit | Lessons from Backing Rippling at $25M Post | Why Climate Tech is a Mirage and Disaster · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, and I do believe that the majority of the best companies are going to be built from San Francisco, but the people need to be a little bit outward-looking in what they're building because your market better be the entire United States at a minimum to be able to succeed. I mean, I think that's why Rippling is doing great is Parker's like, hey, our main target demographic is a really nice HR woman in Nebraska. So we're going to build a product that she's going to love.”
2025-11-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Max Altman on The New Seed War: Can Anyone Compete with Sequoia and a16z | Leaving $2BN on the Table with Reddit | Lessons from Backing Rippling at $25M Post | Why Climate Tech is a Mirage and Disaster · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The things that failed were things that were built for the market of maybe, you know, San Francisco and Manhattan. And the example might use is on-demand dry cleaning app. I love paying extra money to have this nice shirt go and get dry clean myself. And I get to stay in my apartment. But people in Austin and people in St. Louis aren't going to want that. That's clearly not a real scalable VC business. Like, why the hell are we investing in that?”
2025-11-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Max Altman on The New Seed War: Can Anyone Compete with Sequoia and a16z | Leaving $2BN on the Table with Reddit | Lessons from Backing Rippling at $25M Post | Why Climate Tech is a Mirage and Disaster · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Okay, I think what I will say to founders is hey, if it's been years and it's not working, I think I'll say there's absolutely no shame in shutting this down, taking a break, returning 10 cents on the dollar to us. Harry, we don't care if it's 10 cents on the dollar or 50 cents. It doesn't move the needle. We're not in the game of downside protection. Or just go get aquifired. Go work at an amazing company. Like, it's not working out and that's okay. I think we tell them that.”
2025-11-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Max Altman on The New Seed War: Can Anyone Compete with Sequoia and a16z | Leaving $2BN on the Table with Reddit | Lessons from Backing Rippling at $25M Post | Why Climate Tech is a Mirage and Disaster · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, I think that the investment we're the most excited about in Saga are now profound. Within three months, I was just like, oh, they're building an office. They're hiring the best people. They're working on Saturday nights. And their product looks amazing and they're closing deals. And it was obvious within three months.”
2025-11-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Max Altman on The New Seed War: Can Anyone Compete with Sequoia and a16z | Leaving $2BN on the Table with Reddit | Lessons from Backing Rippling at $25M Post | Why Climate Tech is a Mirage and Disaster · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Not following on to our winners. We were a little bit like Lucy Goosey. Dude, Harry, I was running a $200 million fund from my living room in Pack Heights, just like kind of casually typing away, doing some deals, meeting people for coffee. And we didn't have a great portfolio construction strategy. So we just like, great, we have our ownership, you know, let it be. We weren't trying to put more money into companies.”
2025-11-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Max Altman on The New Seed War: Can Anyone Compete with Sequoia and a16z | Leaving $2BN on the Table with Reddit | Lessons from Backing Rippling at $25M Post | Why Climate Tech is a Mirage and Disaster · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think mostly, I mean, that being said, we do have a portfolio construction in the current Saga Fund. We do like to own 10%, but rather own 3% of an amazing founder than, you know, hey, we have our 15% ownership in this company that's going to be worth zero. That doesn't help us. If we can even get two or three percent of the next DoorDasher, Airbnb, we're in great shape.”
2025-11-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Max Altman on The New Seed War: Can Anyone Compete with Sequoia and a16z | Leaving $2BN on the Table with Reddit | Lessons from Backing Rippling at $25M Post | Why Climate Tech is a Mirage and Disaster · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, at the time, this was 2016. That was really pricey. And I remember actually after everything left, Parker and I were both depressed and we were chatting and he came back and we were talking, I think it was like that 17th Street sight glass in San Francisco on the mission. And he's just like, I want to build a laptop leasing company. I want to do something, but I have this fire. I cannot lose to Andreessen. I can't lose to David. And I'm like, yo, this guy's a chip on his shoulder. He can't lose. He's the best founder I've ever met. Like, just give him money and the rest will take care of itself.”
2025-11-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Max Altman on The New Seed War: Can Anyone Compete with Sequoia and a16z | Leaving $2BN on the Table with Reddit | Lessons from Backing Rippling at $25M Post | Why Climate Tech is a Mirage and Disaster · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, definitely Ripley, not to keep being on the same drum, but the learning was just give money to the best people that you know in your network. I remember.”
2025-11-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Max Altman on The New Seed War: Can Anyone Compete with Sequoia and a16z | Leaving $2BN on the Table with Reddit | Lessons from Backing Rippling at $25M Post | Why Climate Tech is a Mirage and Disaster · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't know if they're fucked up cultures, but I don't think they're incentivized to have the best returns. If you're an associate at a firm and you're maybe there for five or six years, your job is to get a deal done that's going to get marked up quickly. So you look good and then can get promoted or get poached to go to another fund, but you have so little carry and you're probably not going to be there the 12 years until you see any liquidity, you're not incentivized the right way.”
2025-11-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Max Altman on The New Seed War: Can Anyone Compete with Sequoia and a16z | Leaving $2BN on the Table with Reddit | Lessons from Backing Rippling at $25M Post | Why Climate Tech is a Mirage and Disaster · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, I think first and foremost, it's really fortunate to work with family because you automatically trust that everyone is doing what is best for the firm and not what's best for them. You can also be radically candid with each other and just like, this was a dumb deal. We cannot do this. You screwed up in a way that you might not be able to do with a new partnership. So I think when we were building the firm, we have an equal GP firm. There's no associates right now. Everyone is completely incentivized to do what's best for the firm, not for themselves. And I think we built the firm that way because of what I learned earlier.”
2025-11-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Max Altman on The New Seed War: Can Anyone Compete with Sequoia and a16z | Leaving $2BN on the Table with Reddit | Lessons from Backing Rippling at $25M Post | Why Climate Tech is a Mirage and Disaster · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, to start, but you know, we weren't great at really doing our pro rata and holding it all the way through, but it's still going to be a great return for the fund.”
2025-11-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Max Altman on The New Seed War: Can Anyone Compete with Sequoia and a16z | Leaving $2BN on the Table with Reddit | Lessons from Backing Rippling at $25M Post | Why Climate Tech is a Mirage and Disaster · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah. Ithis was like dumb enough to never beat my chest and talk about things. I sort of maybe grew up more as a Midwesterner nerve from St. Louis who's.”
2025-11-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Max Altman on The New Seed War: Can Anyone Compete with Sequoia and a16z | Leaving $2BN on the Table with Reddit | Lessons from Backing Rippling at $25M Post | Why Climate Tech is a Mirage and Disaster · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I would say it was a looser strategy. It was give money to the best people. You know, we did reddit at a higher valuation. We did rippling at 20%.”
2025-11-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Max Altman on The New Seed War: Can Anyone Compete with Sequoia and a16z | Leaving $2BN on the Table with Reddit | Lessons from Backing Rippling at $25M Post | Why Climate Tech is a Mirage and Disaster · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's me full time, Sam's helping out a little bit. Jack is fairly involved, you know, helping a tiny bit, bringing us some cool deals, but he's getting really busy with lattice.”
2025-11-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Max Altman on The New Seed War: Can Anyone Compete with Sequoia and a16z | Leaving $2BN on the Table with Reddit | Lessons from Backing Rippling at $25M Post | Why Climate Tech is a Mirage and Disaster · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“All three of us are very bad at branding, you know, whether it's chat GPT or the fun Jack and I did together was called Altman Capital. None of us are good at branding. I think one day we were just like sitting at the kitchen table and we had to give it a name. And there was like one day to do it. And I think it was maybe Jack, which is like, call it hydrazine. There's no real reason for it.”
2025-11-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Max Altman on The New Seed War: Can Anyone Compete with Sequoia and a16z | Leaving $2BN on the Table with Reddit | Lessons from Backing Rippling at $25M Post | Why Climate Tech is a Mirage and Disaster · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, I absolutely did. I think a few things are like one it's fun to make it a little harder. Absolutely it's going to be a little harder if Sam's not involved. But that's good. It's good to be pushed and have to work for what you want. I also think I was really fortunate that I kind of grew up with a Sequoia Founders Fund level like training and background. Like we all lived in a house in the mission and all the best people, whether it's like a Peter Thiel or a Keith are coming by the house, talking about investing, I think we had about 17 unicorns across the fund because it's just a small world and everyone's coming by. So I'm like, oh, these are the founders of Instacart or Reddit or Ripleen or Boom. And it's like, this is the bar. So I learned the bar and I got my really amazing education. So I felt pretty comfortable going in. And I think my sort of ace in the hole is, dude, Harry, I can't fail. You know how embarrassing it would be?”
2025-11-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Max Altman on The New Seed War: Can Anyone Compete with Sequoia and a16z | Leaving $2BN on the Table with Reddit | Lessons from Backing Rippling at $25M Post | Why Climate Tech is a Mirage and Disaster · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Want to be successful in my own right? Like ego is a real thing in human nature, and I don't think I ever want to say, hey, Max crushed it on these funds, but Sam was loosely involved. And it's like, it's not really his. So I left after doing three funds with some combination of Sam and Jack to build out my own firm just for ego and pride to be completely honest.”
2025-11-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Max Altman on The New Seed War: Can Anyone Compete with Sequoia and a16z | Leaving $2BN on the Table with Reddit | Lessons from Backing Rippling at $25M Post | Why Climate Tech is a Mirage and Disaster · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, it's our family group chat. It's the three of us. But absolutely, Jack can absolutely crush it. And they're like, but Sam Altman's brother raised an amazing 275 million dollar fund.”
2025-11-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Max Altman on The New Seed War: Can Anyone Compete with Sequoia and a16z | Leaving $2BN on the Table with Reddit | Lessons from Backing Rippling at $25M Post | Why Climate Tech is a Mirage and Disaster · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source